410 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
As I thought the above prices enormous I have declined advising 
chalks for you & will await your advent.— 
Should you not feel inclined to go to France at present 
which by the bye is the very best season on account of seeing 
the vintage etc. etc.—please write to me so or come to town 
which would be still more agreeable & talk the matter over as 
I think I would persuade you to absent yourself for a month 
or so—I hope your kind lady continues quite well & your Dear 
Little ones— 
Believe me yours most sincerely 
. Joun J. Aupuson. 
Please write by return of Post— 
79 Newman Street 
Oxford Street. 
On this journey to Paris Audubon was accompanied 
by Mr. and Mrs. Swainson and an American artist, 
named Parker, who had been at work on a portrait of 
the naturalist in oils. For Audubon it was mainly a 
canvassing tour; Parker hoped to obtain orders for por- 
traits, and Swainson, new ornithological material at the 
great museum in the Jardin des Plantes, for a work 
upon which he was then engaged.’® 
The party set out on the 1st of September, travel- 
ing by way of Dover and Boulogne, and reached Paris 
on Thursday, September 4. They alighted at the Mes- 
sagerie Royale, Rue des Victoires, and, after looking 
up lodgings, went at once to the Jardin des Plantes to 
pay their respects to Cuvier. The Museum of Natural 
History was closed, but they knocked and asked for the 
Baron. “He was in,” said Audubon, in the journal of 
his Paris experience, 
* Fauna Boreali-Americana; or the Zodlogy of the northern parts of 
British America; Part Second, “The Birds;” by William Swainson and 
John Richardson (London, 1831). 
